This invention concerns snow removal methods and apparatus.
Snow removal in urban areas presents a formidable task for snow falls of exceptional depth or during periods when substantial accumulation from extended periods of snow fall is encountered and must be removed. The limited space on which to pile the snow after being plowed from streets and thoroughfares requires that the snow be removed entirely. Such removal is generally and most commonly done by loading the snow into trucks which transport the snow to distant dumping sites, as into rivers or available surrounding land areas. Clearly, such approach requires enormous expenditures for the trucking of massive volumes of snow, such trucking congesting the traffic arteries and necessitating relatively extensive time periods in order to effect snow clearance.
Such ineffectiveness can exact an enormous toll from the economy of an urban area which has sustained snow fall sufficient to impede for significant periods the normal flow of traffic within the city and nearby areas such as airports, etc.
It has heretofore been realized and proposed that the sewage system of a city could be utilized to enable removal of snow by depositing the snow in the sewer system.
Such method is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,150,946 (Kenlon) and 995,446 (Evans, Jr.). These patents describe relatively elaborate and somewhat impractical means for getting the snow into the sewer system, i.e., the creation of slurry by means of high pressure water received from the water mains, which does not appear feasible for the handling of large volumes of snow, and could create further problems in periods of very cold weather.
It has also been proposed to melt the snow and dump the resultant water into the sewer system as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,803,732 (Moreno).
Such snow removal method has not received wide acceptance due to the cost and impracticality of handling the volumes of snow which sometimes must be handled in northern cities; and also, this method requires a great deal of energy to achieve snow melting, which is undesirable due to the cost of any process requiring the use of heat energy, particularly in view of the recent scarcity and cost of energy.
The volume of water flowing through the municipal sewer system represents a potential source of energy and also a potential means of transport for both melting the snow and removing it from the city streets.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a simplified method and apparatus for utilizing the sewer system as a means of removing snow from urban surface areas which does not require the melting of snow prior to its deposit into the sewer system and which involves relatively low cost, simple equipment which is capable of handling great volumes of snow.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a snow removal method and apparatus in which the effort required in transporting the snow from the site where it is to be removed is reduced to an absolute minimum expenditure in terms of energy and equipment, and which facilitates the snow removal process such as to enable expeditious clearing of the traffic arteries, particularly in congested urban areas.